Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Jan Black.

And I'm Laura Owens. Does college work? That's the question being explored in the new book by education journalist Paul Tuff, who's our guest on this episode.

Paul's latest book is called The Years That Matter Most, How College Makes or Breaks Us.

Paul, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Great to be here.

Tell us more about what the book is about and what prompted you to write it.

Sure. So the book explores the and what prompted you to write it. Sure.

So the book explores the intersection of these two big themes in American life.

One is higher education and the other is social mobility.

And for a long time, I thought that the relationship between those two things was pretty much settled,

that college was the great engine of social mobility

in the United States today. But over the last couple of decades, that has changed. And now,

for many low-income and first-generation college students, higher education more seems like an

obstacle to their social mobility. So that's what the book's about. The reason that I wrote it is that I feel like these questions of how young people get ahead,

how young people are able to achieve their dreams are really central to the health of our democracy

and the health of our country.

And then as a journalist, it also was this opportunity to talk to lots of young people in this critical age and sort of late adolescence and early adulthood who are going through these remarkable changes.

So their stories were not only sort of nationally, politically, socially meaningful, but they were also just, you know, emotionally, personally, psychologically meaningful as well.

So do you think that everyone needs to go to college these days?

Well, I don't think everyone needs to go to a four-year liberal arts college,

but I do think that without some kind of post-secondary credential,

the way that our economy works right now, it is really hard to make a living,

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